While reading Margaret Atwood's, Negotiating With The Devil, A Writer on Writing, I came across this description of a poet:

And now in imagination he has climbed
another planet, the better to look
with single camera view upon this earth
its total scope, and each afflated tick,
its talk, its trick, its tracklesness - and this,
this he would like to write down in a book.

---A. M. Klein Portrait of the Poet as Landscape

I think it a fairly apt description of the mysterious and inexplicable forces that motivate a person to undertake such a daunting task as writing a poem. There are many others, I'm sure, and I hope visitors will use this thread to share some of them.

I wonder what exactly Klein means by "each afflated tick". Presumably referring to the ticks of a clock, not blood-sucking insects. Inspired moments? It's still an odd description of what an elevated observer might see. As for "afflated", what or who is inspired, and what or who does the inspiring?

There appears to be a typo in the second line. Should it be "planet" or "platea"?

I corrected the typo...thanks for noticing it. As for the "afflated tick," I view it as metaphor for all inspired creation, from the faintest of ideas to the most brilliant discoveries, since the beginning of time. The impossibility of capturing these, I think, is an appropriate description of the lifelong quixotic quest of a poet.

Like plumbers and dentists, poets are fallible, and the possibility of genuine nonsense cannot be ruled out. Unlike plumbing and dentistry, however, poetry is slow, frustrating, and poorly rewarded work which fails more often than it succeeds and is therefore embarked upon largely by men and women laboring under a sense of almost religious vocation, grandiose self-delusion, or some combination of both. As a result, many poems...are written by people whose minds you may not wish to enter.

----Mark Haddon The Talking Horse and The Sad Girl and The Village Under the Sea

What is it that a poet knows
that tells him Â­Â­ 'this is real'?
Some revelation, a gift of sight,
granted through an effort of the mind Â­Â­
of infinite delight.

All the time I have been writing on the very edge of knowledge,

heard the real world whispering
with an indistinct and liquid rustlingÂ­Â­
as if to free, at last, an inextricable meaning!
Sought for words simpler, smoother, more clean than any,
only to clear the air
of an unnecessary obstructionâ¦

Not because I wanted to meddle with the unknown
(I do not believe for a moment that it can be done),
but because the visible world seemed to be waiting,
as it always is,
somehow, to be revealed

all inspired creation, from the faintest of ideas to the most brilliant discoveries, since the beginning of time. The impossibility of capturing these, I think, is an appropriate description of the lifelong quixotic quest of a poet

I corrected the typo...thanks for noticing it. As for the "afflated tick," I view it as metaphor for all inspired creation, from the faintest of ideas to the most brilliant discoveries, since the beginning of time. The impossibility of capturing these, I think, is an appropriate description of the lifelong quixotic quest of a poet.